Here is the 1st Blue Sleeve issue of this Mega Rare Privately Pressed LP by Oliver Chaplin called `Standing Stone`, has distinctive black writing on blue sleeve which you can`t read, a Truly Mint copy sold for 2500 British Pounds in 2011, it is unlikely due to the fragile nature of the sleeve that a Mint copy will surface too often so the going price for a Very Good copy seems to be around 500 Pounds plus if you can find one!! I constantly add to my channel why not subscribe All audible song and notes conceived and uttered or fingered by OLIVER CHAPLIN with a contribution from some smaller winged creatures. Recorded mostly on the farm in Wales during early 1974 within shouting distance of the Standing Stone. Everything was recorded by Oliver directly onto a Teac 4 channel tape machine using one microphone and/or direct injection guitar Side 1 1 Off On A Trek 2 Trance 3 Flowers On A Hill 4 Freezing Cold Like An Iceberg 5 Royal Flush 6 Cat And The Rat 7 Instamatic 8 Telephone Side 2 1 Getting Fruity 2 Tricycle 3 Motorway 4 Primrose 5 In Vain 6 Multiplex 7 Orbit Your Factory 8 Tok Tic 9 Where's My Motorbike In early 1974 hippie musician Oliver Chaplin and his brother Chris, a BBC sound engineer, retreated to their parents’ farm somewhere in Wales “within shouting distance of the Standing Stone”. Oliver laid down vocals, acoustic, electric and slide guitars, hand percussion and occasional recorder and harmonica on a four-track Teac. Chris, a veteran of the Beeb’s Hendrix sessions, overlaid the various threads and added numerous sound effects, aided and abetted by occasional unsolicited input from various farm and wild creatures. Oliver’s compositions give the effect of being totally spontaneous but are clearly carefully built up given the amount of overdubbing required. The material ranges from tiny, delicate finger picked acoustic numbers (“Off On A Trek”) via quirky Barrett-esque acid-pop ditties (“Getting Fruity”) to rambling, effects-laden one-chord blues extrapolations (“Freezing Cold Like An Iceberg). Oliver’s guitar skills are manifold and dextrous bolstered by sound effects ranging from simple flanging to backwards taping and what sounds like Les Paul-style vari-speed recording. The lyrics are frequently incomprehensible but it doesn’t matter; Oliver uses his voice as another set of instruments, moaning, warbling and scatting, sometimes distorting it electronically. As testament to Chris’s skills, the sound quality of the final recording is simultaneously utterly low-fi and outstandingly clean. The end product was to be offered to the then fledgling Virgin label, but the reclusive Oliver’s reluctance to engage with the record industry scotched the deal and only a handful of private-press copies were produced. Around fifteen years later one of these surfaced at a car boot sale and the burgeoning psychedelic collector circuit sat up and noticed, applying the retrospective “acid-folk” appellation to it. Such was the demand created by the appearance of this single example that Oliver was tracked down and found to have several more copies still in his possession these fetched crazy sums

• published: 30 Sep 2016
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